Souillac

Over the next few days, we enjoyed exploring Souillac, a relaxed town along the Dordogne River known for its 12th-century Abbey and its biking and canoeing opportunities. We wandered through the main town a few times, where an impressive church and clock tower loomed over the main Place Saint-Martin, still half-destroyed from the Wars of Religion in the 1500s. This was also when we had our first taste of how the smaller towns closed during the heat of the day, especially on weekdays while we were there. The town was sometimes eerily quiet, but this made it quite easy and calming to walk around.

The week while we were in Souillac was hot. We had arrived in central France just as a heatwave made its way across the country, with the highest temperatures saved just for us. We spent so much time in the pool that it felt as though my hair was fried, and my eyes were constantly red from the chlorine. It was beautiful, albeit a little hard to get to sleep at times because we didn't have a fan in our cabin. Luckily, we had a large fridge and freezer, and we became very skilled in freezing our bottles of water to have ice packs and, subsequently, ice-cold water to drink. We cooked dinners that ultimately all tasted quite similar, as we had few flavoring ingredients with us, though it was comforting to have home-cooked meals nonetheless. Some of the euros we saved by cooking meals were then spent on the yummiest mojitos at the restaurant bar, not 2 meters from the pool gates at the campground. In 30-35 degree heat, when your vision is almost blurry with the heatwaves, nothing hits as well as a cold, fresh mojito. Another euro-saving idea was to hand wash our laundry instead of paying extortionate washing machine fees…it took so long. With hindsight we probably should have just paid the fee, but it killed some time and we had plenty of free time while we avoided going out in the sun during the middle of the day. Overall, our cabin was very comfortable (despite a few huge spiders that Vikum saved me from), and we had a really nice time here.Read more